When embroidery is performed using a sewing machine, if a material (object to be sewn) is normal cloth or the like, the cloth is held and fixed by an embroidery frame. However, if the material is hard and lacking flexibility as in a case of leather or plastic, such a material may not be held by an embroidery frame as the frame can damage the material. Further, the material may not be held and fixed by an embroidery frame if the material is smaller than an embroidery frame.
In these cases, generally, an interliner is first held by an embroidery frame, and a leather or plastic material is fixed over the interliner. While examples of the fixing of cloth include thermal adhesion to an interliner, it is not possible to heat a material if leather or plastic is used, as leather or plastic is damaged by heat. When a leather or plastic material is used, the material may be fixed to an interliner by basting at covert portions around the material.
Here, if the material is common cloth, this object may be realized by basting along a rectangular line or an outline close to an embroidery pattern. However, when a leather or plastic material is used, basting in the center of the material leaves pinholes in the material, which pinholes spoil an embroidery work. Therefore, in a process of making an embroidery work, it is necessary to fix a material to an interliner covertly by basting at portions that are stitched inside or that are cut.
Preparing a sewing machine for normal sewing only for basting to perform basting by manual feeding would considerably impair workability. Thus, it is desirable to perform basting by appropriately generating basting data and by using an embroidery function of a sewing machine.
Patent Literature 1 discloses a sewing machine that generates baste sewing data with a predetermined interval around an outline of an embroidery pattern.